Sea of Dreams

by Bevill, C. L.

The closest pixies beckoned me forward again. They got me into a position close to the wall with the small houses and dozens of them came out to watch me. I laid half on my side and propped my head on my bent arm so I could rest comfortably.

  The room had a dampness that was like many caves I had been inside. But it also seemed warmer. Whatever the pixies were up to, they were generating a certain amount of heat. It was nice. Suddenly, I was tired. I had climbed up the Bluff Trail with Zach and I had gone who knew how far through the forest with the pixies. While in better shape than I had been, I was not fully recovered.

  Dozens of pixies watched me. More and more came. Sleepily I noticed there were pools of water near the end of their little city. Some of the pools glowed as green as anything else. I was too lethargic to investigate. I hoped the pixies wouldn’t take offense if I went to sleep, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open.

  Off to dream land I went, and it was a long, long, long time before I came back.

  Seriously.

  ♦

  When I woke up, wait, that wasn’t correct. I didn’t wake up. I came to. I came to what? I became aware again. I opened my eyes but they weren’t really my eyes and I don’t think they were really open. And the world was an explosion of colors, a stunning exhibition of luminosity on the senses. Every color of the rainbow was present. Every secondary color was about. There were a few colors I had never seen before. It was a meadow, but it wasn’t a meadow. I was sitting in grass that wasn’t grass. I was awake but I wasn’t awake.

  Call me Madame Mystified.

  For one thing the sky was purple. Not a lovely violet that I would have imagined in a cogent dream, but a vivid, pulsating purple that bounced and danced. I mean, it was PURPLE! The trees beyond the meadows seemed like normal redwood trees except they were orange and yellow and blue. (The trees were ORANGE! YELLOW! And BLUE!) The grass upon which I was sitting was red, viciously scarlet red that seemed as though it would cut through the flesh. (RED! That’s the best way to get the idea across.)

  And should I mention that my legs were green?

  Oh, yes, indeedy, I had long legs that didn’t look very human anymore. The color was an iridescent green, the shade of a pale green leaf. Long and thin, without toes. My feet were solid, nearly clubbed in form. My arms were similar. No fingers. But I did have little sticky pads on what would have been my palms.

  “Cool,” I said, but it came out high pitched and singsong.

  As I sat up, I became aware of something fluttering at my back. I looked over a pale green shoulder and saw a vibrating, shimmering outline of an object. I twisted around to see it, but it twisted with me. I turned again, trying to figure out what was moving with me and moving independently at the same time.

  Then it dawned on me. I had wings. I looked down and saw that I was glowing. I was a firefly pixie. “Well, that doesn’t happen every day,” I stated obviously. And the really weird part was that it didn’t feel weird. It felt perfectly normal.

  “Certainly not,” said another singsong voice. I turned to see a pixie landing beside me. Captivated by her finely wrought features I stared and continued to stare.

  She was the same pale green of my limbs, the color of a peridot glistening in the sunlight. Standing near me, her arms akimbo, her wings fluttering gently behind her, she watched me with a curious deportment. Her eyes dominated her face, the shape of almonds but much larger in proportion to a human’s eyes and face. The color of the eyes was like the iridescence of the wings, but the colors mixed, blended, and went on forever. There was a tiny nose with little holes and a large, welcoming mouth that curved in a smile.

  It wasn’t an expression the pixie was used to making and I thought that perhaps she was attempting to smile for my benefit.

  “Will the standing-on-two-legs-singing-unhappy-girl not speak to one-who-flies-fastest-in-spring-showers?” she sang to me at last, probably because I hadn’t said anything else.

  “I’m…I’m…what did you call me?” I asked and then finished for myself. “Standing-on-two-legs-singing-unhappy-girl?”

  “It’s what we call Standing-On-Two-Legs-Singing-Unhappy-Girl,” the pixie replied.

  “And you’re One-Who-Flies-Fastest-In-Spring-Showers?” I asked politely.

  The pixie nodded.

  “Do you mind if I just call you, oh, Spring, for short?” I waited for her to nod. Then I added, “And my name is Sophie.”

  “Soo-phee,” the pixie repeated. “Of course, we know your human name.”

  I took another look around and then asked, “Am I really a pixie now?”

  The pixie giggled like a little girl. “Of course not, Standing-uh, Soophee is still very large, wingless, and lumbers like the giant sisters of the islands.” She demurely covered her mouth with her hand. “But more elegantly, certainly.” The last part sounded like a social lie.

  “So what the heck is going on?”

  “You’re walking in our dream world,” Spring answered as if I was insane. “There are important issues we needed to communicate with you.”

  I would have smiled but it seemed like an alien thing to do.

  “Fly with us, Soophee,” she invited. “Come see your sisters. See our world as we see it. Understand us better.”

  “I can fly?”

  “Most definitely,” Spring said with another amused snigger. “How horrible it must be for one to be wingless, but here Soophee is one of us.”

  So I flew. It took a little concentration but the wings were the ones that did all the work. And what do you know, I didn’t fall once.

  Chapter Twenty – Did I Have a Few Questions?

  What question didn’t I ask? The pixies’ expressions weren’t like humans, but I’m certain they got very tired of my endless questioning.

  For example: “Why did you save my life?” Answer: “It was meant to be.” Question: “Did you travel up the coast to reach me?” Answer: “Your presence called to us as a fellow sister.” (I think that was a yes.) Question: “Where were you before?” Answer: “Before we were before, as we shall always be.” (Beats me. I don’t think they knew there was a before.) Question: “How long will I be with you walking in dreams?” Answer: “Until the dawn brings forth the swerve of sunshine upon our infinite wells.” (A CIA spy in deep cover didn’t have anything on the girls on evasive answers.)

  I met a lot of pixies. They had very interesting names. Flies-With-Red-Gold-Pink-Flowers. Dives-Further-Than-All-Others-In-The-Morning-Skies. Wind-Skimmer-Who-Braves-The-Great-Blowing-Sands. Most of the names had to do with flying or variations thereof. However, there was One-Who-Produces-More-Fledglings-Than-All-Else that raised my eyebrows. I gathered she had a lot of children, but I didn’t ask how many.

  And it took some effort but I did discern that it was the males in the water and the females who flew. Procreation was apparently brief and involved eggs dropped into the waters for the males to fertilize. If I understood what they told me, then the eggs developed in the waters, and became either male or female. Females had to reach the surface and fly before they drowned. There weren’t relationships as we knew them.

  Spring did ask about how our people made babies and I’ve never seen so many emotionless faces staring at me blankly. The birds-and-bees discussion didn’t really register with them, but they did like Zach’s emotional attachment to me. Previously, they hadn’t realized he was, in fact, a male.

  “Males are bigger?” Spring asked.

  “Generally,” I answered carefully. “Hairier, too. You know, Ethan’s the one with the full beard on his face.”

  “We don’t like Big-Hairy-Face-With-Grouchy-Look much,” Spring pronounced. “He doesn’t sing.”

  “He’s not so bad,” I defended him, wondering why I was doing it. “He just doesn’t believe in the new things as the rest of us do.”

  Spring nodded solemnly. She did understand that these were new experiences for us, that our lives had been drastically different. However, the concept of ‘before’ seemed to bother them.
There was no ‘before.’ There was only now, what was happening now, and possibly what would happen immediately in the future.

  After an extended tour of the area was over, I had met more pixies than I could count. I couldn’t remember most of their names and was glad there wasn’t going to be a test later. Spring flew me back to the meadow and we both settled to the ground in a movement that seemed as practiced as if I had been flying since I was born.

  Then she stared at me with her emotionless features. Her eyes glittered in extraordinary demonstration. It was beginning to occur to me that the color variations in the eyes were an indicator of the emotional levels they were feeling.

  “Why me?” I asked.

  ‘Me’ was another term that the pixies didn’t feel comfortable with. They seemed to work in concert. There was much third person reference to all except myself. They didn’t know exactly how to refer to me. I was Soophee or Stands, etc. or occasionally you. ‘You’ was always said with deferential courtesy and hesitation because it was another word that the pixies weren’t used to employing.

  Spring stepped closer and took my shoulders in her hands. Rather, her hands rested easily on my shoulders, allowing the sticky part to face to the side. “You, Soophee, are the one we’ve been waiting for. Soophee is part of the greater magic of this wonderful world. It flows within in you. It shines from your skin, and radiates from your eyes. Soophee’s role is so very imperative that we needed to impart to her, her very importance.”

  “That’s why you’ve brought me to your home,” I said.

  “Yes,” Spring nodded urgently. It was obvious to me that it was another motion copied from the humans. She was trying to use movements that I would understand. “There is so much more for Soophee to learn but we are limited. Soophee is our sister in our heart, if not in our skin. Soophee is here to feel as we do, but also to take on her new roles, her new powers.”

  “My new roles?” I repeated. “My new powers? Do you mean the ability to tell if something bad is going to happen?”

  “Knowing about impending danger is the sisters’ way of protecting ourselves. It is what makes us able to survive, but still there is more for Soophee,” Spring replied earnestly. She removed one arm and waved expressively. “This is our world. This is the sisters’ place in the solar system and Soophee is also our protection. Soophee must be in order to save us.”

  “You believe I’m here to protect you?” I asked slowly. “How can I do that?”

  “Soophee must listen to what your inner voices tell you,” Spring informed me. “Believe in those voices. They will guide Soophee.”

  I didn’t know what to say, but Spring took that as acquiescence to my new positions.

  “Come, Soophee,” she said. “Let’s fly once more. We have more of importance to show Soophee.”

  So we flew once again. This time we flew over the forest canopy, a cluster of pixies grouped in close formation. Some of them drafted effortlessly off each other and even I found myself doing it without thinking about it. The strongest flyers went in front and when they tired, others replaced them so they could draft as well. After a while we reached the great path through the forest that the Big Mamas had made.

  Spring flew near to me and called, “This is the trail of the great sisters of the islands. Sometimes we call them Lumbering-Beasts-That-Eat-Constantly-And-Never-Bother-Anything-Else-Living.”

  “The Big Mamas,” I breathed. The pixies’ name for them certainly told their story. The Big Mamas were basically harmless unless one threw oneself under their colossal foot.

  “They live out on the islands that we see in the distance,” Spring waved in the general direction of the ocean. “If we fly very high, we can see their home. They come to eat the grasses that they need to survive. As the sun spins away from us they will conserve their energies more until the sun come back to warm our side of the planet.”

  “Why are you showing me this?” The intelligence of the pixies warmed me. Clever, articulate in their own language, they were very special, and I knew I could learn from them. I wanted to learn from them. It seemed crucial.

  Spring hovered near me so closely that I could feel her breath on my shoulder. “All that is new has familiar connections,” she said. “The great sisters will defend us as well as you and your human kind.”

  I opened my mouth to ask about a million more questions when she motioned me to fly after her.

  “We have more places to travel to,” Spring called over her shoulder. “And precious little time.”

  We visited the midnight pool once more and Spring explained about the interior pools. The water percolated in through holes in the lava rock, allowing the eggs to be hatched there. It was the only place that pixies could be created. If it were lost then all of them would be lost as well. I had assumed that the eggs were laid in the exterior stream, but the pools inside the cave were what were so significant.

  The importance of the site was not lost on me. Although I had lived in a world without firefly pixies, unicorns, Big Mamas, and whatever else we would encounter in the future, I wasn’t certain I wanted to return to the way it had been before.

  Although I missed my parents and my close friends, I had been forever tainted by the magic of the changed world. ‘Tainted’ wasn’t the best word to use, so I substituted ‘influenced.’ I had been forever influenced by the magic of the changed world.

  I wasn’t the same Sophie I had been before. I would never be that Sophie again.

  The last stop for the pixies was the Redwoods camp of the humans. With the altered perception of colors I was unsure of the time of day, although I assumed it was evening. There was a group around the fire pit, but the fire was burning low. Gideon was talking urgently to the group about an ongoing search.

  “It’s not too late. The weather has been mild. The chances of being in the forest and not being impacted by exposure are decent. We can finish the grid searches first thing in the morning,” Gideon said insistently. “If we don’t have any success then we can make new plans.”

  Ethan said, “But it’s been four days, Gideon. We have to take into consideration that she might be dead. Or worse, that she decided to cut her losses.”

  Zach set his shoulders and faced Ethan angrily. “She didn’t leave us,” he snarled. “She wouldn’t do that.”

  “All right then,” Ethan snapped back. He looked at Gideon. “What about all your psychic powers, then, Gideon? What about that? What is that telling you?”

  Elan parted the crowd and came to stand beside Gideon. The smaller boy comfortingly took Gideon’s hand. “She’s alive,” he said loudly, his young voice breaking. “And she’s thinking of us. She’ll come back and soon.”

  Gideon patted Elan’s thin shoulder. “I don’t know what to tell you, Ethan. We knew the abilities that we have don’t always work in the way that we want.”

  I hovered next to Spring and took it all in. Was this part of the dream or was this happening? Zach and Ethan were supposed to go after Max and Thad’s bodies. They were supposed to see if they could find the burned man. But there they were, still in the camp, looking for someone. Who had been gone for four days? I hadn’t heard anything about anyone being missing. Had the burned man come immediately here to initiate more havoc? Who would Zach get so upset over? Kara?

  But like me, Kara hadn’t been gone for four days.

  Then, Kara stepped forward. She had been in the midst of the crowd and I hadn’t seen her. “I dreamed about her last night,” she said vociferously. “I dreamed that she was dreaming about the pixies. She could see these amazing colors and they were telling her amazing things. She was flying.” Kara clenched her fists and thudded them helplessly against her thighs. “She wasn’t in pain. She wasn’t so forlorn anymore.”

  Zach cleared his throat. “It sounds like the dreams I’ve been having about her.”

  Oh, how could I be so dense? They were talking about me? But I hadn’t been gone for four days. Perhaps I had been gone overnight.
I wasn’t certain if anyone would have noticed that my bunk had not been slept in. Not four days. Definitely not.

  “Four days?” I said to Spring.

  “Four days in human terms,” Spring ascertained. “Soon Soophee will awaken from the dreaming place and rejoin her human family. But she will also be Soophee the protector. She will be Standing-On-Two-Legs-Singing-Girl-Who-Guards-Against-The-Evil-Ones.”

  “No longer unhappy, huh?” I said wryly.

  Spring didn’t get the subtle implication and nodded her head at me. “Not unhappy now. Now Soophee is accepting, and not wholly unhappy.”

  “I can still go and look for her for another hour,” Zach was protesting the halt in the search. “If someone will come with me. There’s enough light to-”

  Gideon placed his hand on Zach’s shoulder comfortingly. “You need rest, Zach. More than any of us. You might have been dreaming about Sophie, but you’ve barely been asleep to do it.”

  Zach cursed fluidly and broke away. He stared at the group, searching their eyes in turn for something he couldn’t find. Kara opened her mouth to offer but I did a nose dive and flew straight at him. I couldn’t stand the thought of his pain. Four days? They hadn’t had a clue where I could have gone. I was torn at the guilt that I felt.

  Spring buzzed behind me.

  Kara said excitedly, “Look, Zach, look, it’s the firefly pixies. They haven’t come since…”

  Zach looked around urgently. I flew directly at him and pulled up just short of his face. Spring did a controlled dive behind me. “Stern-Affectionate-Handsome-One-Who-Pines won’t understand our words,” she called from behind me.

  “Help me,” he said to me and Spring. His face contorted into an expression of utter hopelessness. “Please, I’m begging you.” His hands reached for me and although I knew that he couldn’t have known that it was me, I landed on his palm, looking up at him with all the intensity I could muster.

  Spring hovered beside me. “Stern-Affectionate-Handsome-One-Who-Pines will get his wish soon. Soophee cannot help him now.”